Q&A: “Do you think that would be poly or bi? I don’t feel I’m straight because of the attraction to nonbinary individuals, but…”
anonymous said:
I’m questioning currently. I’m female but attracted to males, demiboys, and some agender and genderfluid individuals. But mostly masculine presenting nb individuals. Do you think that would be poly or bi? I don’t feel I’m straight because of the attraction to nonbinary individuals. But I’m MOSTLY attracted to masculinity.
hello, anon.
i’ll be honest, this is kind of a tough ask for me to answer. it sounds like you’re looking to define your sexuality based on the appearance or gender expression of the people you are attracted to, whereas my understanding of attraction (in terms of orientations) is more based on a person’s gender identity rather than how a person presents themself.
you said that you are mostly attracted to masculinity. people of literally ANY gender can present themselves in a masculine manner. does this mean that you could potentially be attracted to a masculine person of any gender, not just the four you mentioned…?
see, the problematic thing about basing your orientation on an arbitrary concept like masculinity is that it’s just that, arbitrary. and extremely subjective. for example, you may find yourself attracted to someone who in your eyes is masculine presenting, but that person themself may not self-identify as masculine at all. to that person, you associating their gender expression with masculinity could be just as offensive as if you’d straight up misgendered them. where would this leave you?
some people use the terms androsexual, androromantic, etc to describe attraction to masculinity, but as i’ve tried to point out above these terms and what they try to describe are problematic.
you could be either poly (attracted to multiple genders) or bi (attracted to two or more genders) seeing as how both essentially describe your attraction to people of various gender identities. whether you choose to identify as poly or bi (or both) is a personal decision that only you get to make.